Latest news with #Yalta
LeMonde
2 days ago
- Politics
- LeMonde
War in Ukraine: Trump fails to secure ceasefire from Putin
Pursuing peace. That was the motto of the meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin on Friday, August 15, in Anchorage, Alaska, intended to secure a ceasefire on the ground in Ukraine and pave the way for a meeting between the US president and his Russian and Ukrainian counterparts, including Volodymyr Zelensky. Many feared that this summit would become another Munich, with the United States abandoning Ukraine, attacked but not invited to the talks, to Russia – just as Czechoslovakia was handed over to Adolf Hitler in 1938. Others warned of another Yalta, the February 1945 conference that divided Europe between Joseph Stalin and the Anglo-Americans. In reality, no one knows what was negotiated in Anchorage on Friday, except that the summit was an undeniable failure for Trump. Before the meeting, the US president reiterated his demand: "I want to see a ceasefire rapidly. I don't know it's going to be today, but I'm not going to be happy if it's not today (...) I want the killing to stop. I'm here to stop the killing." Nothing of the sort was announced. No agreement was detailed, even if it cannot be ruled out that negotiations may have progressed. In the short term, peace will have to wait.
RTÉ News
3 days ago
- Politics
- RTÉ News
Why the Trump-Putin meeting worries Europe
Confirmation last week that US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin would hold a summit in Alaska raised a red flag for Europe and Ukraine. With no Ukrainian or European involvement, and the expiry of a US deadline to impose sanctions on Moscow coming to nothing, it looked like Russia was getting it all its own way. Ukraine and Europe's chief concern for most of the past week has been that Mr Trump and Mr Putin could strike a deal in Alaska that would force Ukraine to cede about one-fifth of its territory to Russia - regions in eastern and southern Ukraine currently occupied by Russian forces. There would be some "land swapping", Mr Trump told reporters in the White House earlier this week. It was beginning to sound like another Yalta, the conference held in Crimea in February 1945 between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin where the two Western allies gave in to the Soviet leader's demands to redraw the map of Eastern Europe and control it. Of course, Russia's leader wants more Ukrainian land than the 19% currently occupied by his forces. He wants Ukraine to withdraw entirely from the four regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia and to have Russia's annexation of those regions, along with Crimea, internationally recognised as the main price for stopping the war. Official recognition of Russian control of any seized territory is unacceptable for Europe, and naturally for Ukraine. Problematically for Europe, in April the Trump administration offered the Kremlin a very generous deal to stop the war that reportedly included official US recognition of Russia's control of Crimea and de facto recognition of Russian-occupied territory in eastern and southern Ukraine. US recognition of Crimea still on table Though Russia rejected the offer at the time, the US position had not changed. That would mean that official US recognition of Crimea as part of Russia is still on the table. In the eyes of European governments, allowing Russia to change international borders through force would simply embolden Mr Putin to rearm and invade Ukraine again in the coming years, and next time take it all. Or Russia could threaten the security of a NATO member state in Eastern Europe. Either scenario threatens the future of European security. It explains why this week there was a flurry of diplomatic activity in European capitals to impress upon Mr Trump the need to distrust the Russian leader's assurances. On Tuesday, the leaders of all EU member states except Hungary endorsed a letter supporting Ukraine's right to decide its own future and also that any diplomatic solution to the war in Ukraine must protect the security interests of Ukrainians and Europeans - which brings Ukraine's future security needs a step closer to Europe's. Then followed a meeting called by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz between Mr Trump, other European leaders and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Trump now reading territorial issue European lobbying seems to have had an effect on how Mr Trump is now reading the territorial issue. According to sources familiar with the meeting, the US president told the other leaders during Wednesday's call that he would not negotiate a division of Ukrainian territory. That assurance bodes well for Ukraine and Europe. It was also reported by US media that Mr Trump told the other attendees that the US could play a role in offering a security guarantee to Ukraine, though no details have emerged of what level of engagement that might be. If that is the case, then it would be the first time that Mr Trump has committed to protecting Ukraine's post-war security alongside the Europeans. There is also a strong possibility that during the Alaska meeting Mr Putin will bring up Russia's original list of demands given to the Biden administration in December 2021 just two months before Russia invaded Ukraine. Presented by Russian officials at the time as a formula for decreasing geopolitical tension in Europe, one of the demands required the West to give security guarantees to Russia. In reality, the demands looked like a Russian attempt to regain its former sphere of influence over all of Eastern Europe. The most notable demand was for NATO to withdraw its troops and weapons from countries in Eastern Europe that joined the alliance from the late 1990s onwards. Doing so would leave countries like Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia particularly exposed to the threat of Russian aggression. For almost 80 years, the US has provided Europe (first Western Europe and then Eastern Europe from the late 1990s onwards) with a security guarantee, and American and European leaders have always worked in lockstep when it comes to the continent's security. Mr Trump is the first post-war US president to cast doubts about the future of that ironclad security guarantee, leading to commitments earlier this year from European governments to ramp up spending on their national defence budgets. Another point of concern for Europe is that some kind of economic deal between the US and Russia could come from the Alaska meeting. This scenario would be to the detriment of US-Europe relations given that the Europe is already hitting Russia with heavy sanctions. Back in March when the Trump-Putin relationship had briefly blossomed, the White House spoke about the "enormous economic deals" that could arise from better US-Russia relations. At the same time, Mr Putin spoke about the possibility of energy sector cooperation. Not surprisingly, the Kremlin returned to the theme of US-Russia economic cooperation this week. Yesterday, a senior member of the Russian delegation was talking about the "huge untapped potential" of trade cooperation between the two countries. That kind of talk will make Europe feel nervous that Mr Trump could preference business over decades-old alliances. Mr Putin is bringing both Russia's finance minister and the head of Russia's direct investment fund as part of his delegation which indicates that Russia is going to lay out business opportunities for the US. Mr Trump is a businessman and may be won over. But just as Mr Trump is unpredictable, so too is the outcome of the meeting later today at the Elmendorf-Richardson Joint Base outside Anchorage. European leaders, like the rest of us, will have to wait and see what Mr Trump and Mr Putin agree upon and what it will mean for Ukraine.
New York Times
5 days ago
- Politics
- New York Times
Trump and Putin Could Decide Others' Fates, Echoing Yalta Summit
The world's superpowers met in 1945 in the Black Sea port of Yalta to divide up Europe after the defeat of Nazi Germany. They drew lines on the map that tore apart countries, effectively delivered Eastern Europe to Soviet occupation and dismembered Poland. And none of those countries were represented or had a say. As President Trump prepares to meet President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Friday in Alaska, there is more talk — and anxiety — among Ukrainians and Europeans about a second Yalta. They are not scheduled to be present, and Mr. Trump has said he plans to negotiate 'land swaps' with Mr. Putin over Ukrainian territory. 'Yalta is a symbol of everything we fear,' said Peter Schneider, a German novelist who wrote 'The Wall Jumper,' about the division of Berlin. At Yalta, the world itself was divided and 'countries were handed to Stalin,' he said. 'Now we see that Putin wants to reconstruct the world as it was at Yalta. For him, it begins with Ukraine, but that's not his ending.' Yalta, itself in Russian-annexed Crimea, has become a symbol for how superpowers can decide the fates of other nations and peoples. 'It's a linchpin moment, when the European world is divided in two and the fate of Europeans in the East is locked in without any possible say,' said Ivan Vejvoda, a Serb political scientist with the Institute for Human Sciences, a research institution in Vienna. 'Of course today's world is different, but decisions are being made on behalf of third countries for whom this is an existential issue,' Mr. Vejvoda said. The prospect that big powers might settle the fate of a third country that is not present is 'a national trauma in most of Eastern Europe, including Estonia,' said Kadri Liik, an Estonian and Russia expert with the European Council on Foreign Relations. 'That fear is always close to the surface, the fear that someone will sell us off or sell Ukraine off and that's the start of a bigger process.' Mr. Putin's stated aims do not end with Ukraine. As a revisionist who wants to upend the current order, he has made clear he wants NATO to end any expansion, pull its troops out of any country that joined after 1997 — including all countries that had been under Soviet occupation and became members starting in 1999 — and negotiate a new 'security architecture' in Europe that recognizes the old Soviet sphere of influence. He wants to divide the United States from Europe, if he can, to weaken or destroy the trans-Atlantic relationship created after World War II. The Yalta meeting of the three 'great powers' — Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States — took place in February 1945, after France and Belgium had been liberated and the defeat of Germany was inevitable. The summit was followed by a conference in Potsdam, Germany, in July, which reconfirmed the division of Europe into Western and Soviet spheres. Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill were both ailing and exhausted. Many in Eastern Europe came to believe that the two men had been taken in by the promises of Joseph Stalin that he would allow free elections in the countries occupied by the Red Army. 'Yalta has gone down in history as many things, but it became a dirty word in Eastern Europe and especially in Poland,' since a main topic of the conference was its new borders, said Serhii Plokhii, a professor of Ukrainian history at Harvard and the author of numerous books about the Cold War, including 'Yalta: The Price of Peace.' Charles de Gaulle was also not invited to Yalta, Mr. Plokhii noted. 'Here we see clear parallels between de Gaulle and Europe and Poland and Ukraine,' he said. Europe's major powers are also left out of the Alaska summit and plan to discuss the meeting virtually on Wednesday with Mr. Trump and Vice President JD Vance. Of course, there are clear differences, Mr. Plokhii said. Stalin was troublesome but an ally, who had been instrumental in defeating the Nazis. Roosevelt and Churchill were doing what they could 'to better the situation for the territories already occupied by the Red Army.' They were not giving up territories the allies held or negotiating about the government of France, as Stalin wanted, he said. 'So there were no real concessions on territories not already controlled by the Soviet Union.' And neither Washington nor London wanted to expand the war to drive out the Soviets, although Churchill later ordered contingency planning for such a conflict. For Timothy D. Snyder, a historian of Ukraine and the Cold War, the Alaska summit is 'morally less defensible' than the one in Yalta because Mr. Putin is not an ally, as Stalin was. 'Although he was ruling a terrible system and oppressing as he liberated, the Soviets had just borne the brunt of the war in Europe, so it was inevitable to discuss with them a settlement at the end of the war,' he said. But for Mr. Snyder, a professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto, there is a crucial difference with Yalta. It is Russia now, not Nazi Germany, that is 'carrying out an unprovoked war and all its atrocities.' Russia is 'not an ambiguous partner who helped end the war, but started the war.' That Mr. Trump is engaging and negotiating with Mr. Putin, which former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was reluctant to do, is easily defensible because Russia is a combatant. But so is Ukraine, the critics argue, and President Volodymyr Zelensky should be there, even if Mr. Putin claims to regard him as illegitimate and Ukraine as artificial. Today, Mr. Plokhii said, Mr. Putin wants Ukraine to hand over territories not occupied by Russia. So that also raises another controversial moment in history, at Munich in 1938, when Neville Chamberlain agreed with Adolf Hitler to dismantle Czechoslovakia, which was not represented at those talks, in a vain, doomed effort to keep the peace. 'We know Churchill and Roosevelt got some criticism over Yalta, but it was Chamberlain who became infamous,' Mr. Plokhii said. Mr. Putin's demand for unconquered Ukrainian territory is also similar to Hitler's demand for the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia in 1938, Mr. Snyder said. 'If Ukraine is forced to concede the rest of the Donbas, it would concede defensive lines and fortifications crucial to its defense, which is what the Czechs had to do,' he said. 'Hitler's aim was to destroy Czechoslovakia,' Mr. Snyder said, 'and Putin's ultimate goal is to destroy Ukraine.'
Irish Times
5 days ago
- Politics
- Irish Times
Why Putin has good reasons to be hopeful for Friday's summit meeting with Trump
Should Ukraine's worst fears come to pass, Donald Trump will on Friday give away land in the negotiating chamber that Russia could not win by force of arms. The ghosts of Munich, Yalta and other sordid bargains ought to be stalking Alaska. Alas, such diplomatic notorieties are unlikely to be in Trump's mind at his summit with Vladimir Putin . His chief Russia envoy, Steve Witkoff, is too confused about battle lines in today's Ukraine to find time to study what such summits did to the maps of yesteryear. We can be sure that Putin will not be similarly unburdened by history. What has happened over the past seven months is history enough. To recap, Trump came to office vowing an instant deal to end Russia's war on Ukraine. Having repeatedly failed to get Putin to agree to a ceasefire, Trump lost patience last month and vowed economic warfare on Russia unless Putin changed course. READ MORE By agreeing to meet in Alaska, Putin is apparently responding to Trump's threats. In reality, he has not yet agreed to a ceasefire. This does not amount to game, set and match for Putin. But he is starting the tournament with a free set to his name. The most critical slice of history is Trump's meeting with Putin in Helsinki in 2018. Then Trump appeared to side with Putin against his own intelligence agencies in accepting that Russia had not interfered in America's 2016 election. To underline the point, Trump also revived a plan for a joint US-Russia cyber security taskforce that would focus on election integrity. That was like putting a wolf in charge of sheep welfare. Such was the US domestic outrage that Trump was forced to drop the idea. [ Ukrainians will not give their land to occupiers, says Zelenskiy after Trump comments Opens in new window ] But Trump is in a far stronger domestic position than he was in 2018. Dan Coats, then director of national intelligence, publicly defended the US intelligence agencies after Helsinki. Trump's current director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, is radically different. She recently said that there had indeed been a Russia-related 2016 election plot, only it was cooked up by Barack Obama and his deep state to try to stop Trump from taking office. It is beyond unlikely that any jury would convict Obama, Joe Biden or other 'conspirators' of such an outlandish charge. But Gabbard did what was required of her, which was to deflect from the controversy over Trump's refusal to release the Jeffrey Epstein files. None of which necessarily means that Trump will cave in to Putin. The Russian leader still has to persuade the US president to read Ukraine's map the way he does. Putin has delayed potentially crippling US sanctions on Russia's oil exports, which have been keeping Russia's economy afloat. But Trump's threat is only suspended. [ Trump-Putin meeting: After months strengthening its hand, Ukraine is back to square one Opens in new window ] Russia's President Vladimir Putin holds a meeting on economic issues in Moscow on August 12th. Photograph: Vyacheslav Prokofiev/ AFP via Getty Images Putin has already crossed one line with Trump that, for others, would earn banishment – Trump's humiliation. Almost every time the US president has asked Putin for a ceasefire, Russia's attacks on Ukraine have intensified the next day. This hurt Trump's vanity and led to his reversal of the Pentagon's ban on selling arms to Ukraine. Against that are two things in Putin's favour that are of existential concern to Ukraine. The first is the fact that Trump wants a deal far more than Putin. Russia has suffered more deaths in Ukraine than in every Soviet and Russian war combined since 1945. Although Russia has lost some of the Ukrainian territory it seized following its February 2022 invasion, Putin believes time is on his side. Should he exploit Trump's desire for a deal to win territory that Ukraine has lost so much blood defending, the backlash would be furious. Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskiy would be ejected from office were he to agree to any uneven land swaps. Trump's infamous upbraiding of Zelenskiy in their February Oval Office encounter was a moment of truth. 'You don't have the cards,' Trump said. US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in the Oval Office of the White House in February. Photograph: Doug Mills/ The New York Times Putin's second advantage is Trump's ignorance. In addition to Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt had Harry Hopkins at Yalta, yet Joseph Stalin still got what he wanted. Trump has Witkoff. After Witkoff's first meeting with Putin in March, Trump's envoy did not know which Ukrainian oblasts Putin claims sovereignty over. Five months later Witkoff still seems confused. Deal making bluster is no substitute for knowledge. Theodore Roosevelt famously said that US presidents should speak softly and carry a big stick. Trump has been talking loudly and wielding a noodle. Putin has good reasons to be hopeful on Friday. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025
Daily Mail
16-07-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
A new 'shadow rivalry' has emerged in the war with Harry and Meghan. This peace summit was not all it seemed... and there's only one way it ends: MAUREEN CALLAHAN
Not since Yalta has the world seen such a controversial summit. The seemingly impossible happened over the weekend, with senior aides to King Charles and Prince Harry meeting to broker a potential reconciliation — reportedly leaving livid.
